Our Mission
Our mission is to integrate child-led play, the arts, music, and nature immersion into a community of learning that nurtures each child’s ability to participate with compassion and active engagement in our world.
Our Beliefs
Teaching and learning at Bainbridge is rooted in the following beliefs:
We believe children need attachments to gentle, joyful, creative adults whose work is to hold each child in a state of unconditional positive regard.
We believe children’s deepest early learning is driven from within, and is drawn out through relationships with other children, teachers, and their families.
We believe that meaningful, lasting teaching comes from educators who are not only well versed in a richly integrated and thoughtful pedagogy but also who are committed to a lifelong practice of self-awareness, curiosity, and compassionate presence.
We believe in teaching and learning methods that hold mastery and concentration in productive tension with imagination and play.
We believe in engagement with the outdoors and the natural world – as a foundation for emotional and physical health, and as a practice in interconnectedness.
We believe in developmentally appropriate activities – child or adult imagined – that cultivate attention, emotional self-awareness, and a lasting capacity for love of self and others.
We believe that art is a lens through which we integrate our experiences – an essential process by which we bring meaning to our education and our lives.
Our Curriculum
Our curriculum draws from the best practices of progressive, alternative school models such as Montessori, Waldorf, and Enki to form a foundation of social learning that balances a child’s unbiased observation and patient reflection with a teacher’s active instruction and modeling. We do not teach to the children; instead teachers guide, facilitate, and reflect as the children uncover our multi-layered world. Our curriculum creates opportunities for children to learn through play, storytelling, environmental experiences, arts, and relationship building. The day is a balance of child-led activities, community work, and teacher-guided time. With the presence of a strongly attuned teacher and a carefully crafted physical space, we strive to offer a thoughtful and responsive rhythm to our days, laying the groundwork for healthy, joyful, meaningful learning.
c l a s s r o o m and m a t e r i a l s
The prepared classroom environment balances concept mastery with social, emotional learning through imaginary play. It also cultivates an appreciation for well-crafted, authentic materials and a connection to and fluency in the natural world.
We find the functional-aesthetics of Montessori-inspired materials compelling, and they are widely used in the classroom. These materials effectively deconstruct and isolate concepts, creating opportunity for children to encounter them in their simplest parts. Children can then rebuild these isolated parts into a more complicated framework.
We also create opportunity for more open-ended, play-based learning. Rather than bombarding children with directions and solutions, we provide materials that call upon internal resources and flexible thinking, trusting that children’s natural engagement will lead them to unique and rewarding discovery. Creative play also demands social interaction that is essential for children’s understanding of themselves in a social context, and also fosters responsibility and autonomy that is nourishment for each child’s developing sense of self.
j o u r n e y s o u t w a r d and i n
We strive to bring children into deep contact with the natural world through regular walkable outings around our neighborhood and city parks, and on occasion, to local farms.We aim to integrate those experiences back in the classroom through art, song, conversation, and hands-on activities.
t h e a r t s
We seek to nourish and create an appreciation for creativity, flexible thinking, and wonderment. Although we use traditional materials and techniques, we begin from an understanding that art in its many potential forms is not simply the designated block of time when we make things with our hands. Instead we use artful process throughout our days – in thoughtful decision-making, in innovation and resourcefulness. Creative expression is the means by which we see, hear, make, and listen.